Neck Wounds ~ Rag-Dal

 

Rag-Dal is a new manuscript I am knee deep in. Below is an excerpt from this universe I am creating. 
I call this Neck Wounds.

I am slumped back in the tree and I am angry that Mother is watching me from the window. 
I like this branch because it fits between my thighs, where a strange ache grows in my crotch, something I haven’t yet placed. I like this branch because there is a mourning dove nest sitting at the end. I like this branch because it’s just as high and powerful as Mother is in the second story kitchen window. I like that my hazel eyes glint golden in the bright green light filtering through the trees. I like this branch because it satisfies all of these needs; the sexuality I haven’t grasped, the melancholic coo of the doves, a stance of power, a stance of beauty, a stance of wholeness. 
I look at the doves and recall this: Mother taught me how to stuff rag dolls with the feathers of the doves that dad hunted. The rag dolls’ stomachs protruded from them, swollen bumps like they had babies inside of them or were bitten by a large horsefly. 
I look at the flower garden and recall Mother teaching me of the bees sucking on the nectar filled centers of the flowers. They were collecting their feast of the day. 
I look at the vegetable garden and recall Mother teaching me that this is where we collect ours.
She didn’t teach me to spread my legs and wrap them around a branch, building comfort of the soft sensations I began to feel. A certain wetness was creeping into me. It joined the sweat of my body. 
I look back at Mother, who is still looking at me, and my mouth is very dry. She’s running the sink. I can feel it like she must feel against her hand; that refreshing chill that comes out of the spout when the handle is turned completely upwards as it was at that particular moment. 
I turn my hips, rub myself against a bump in the branch. She can probably see the small twitch in my eye because I saw the one in hers. Sweat started to feel like fire. I could feel my pores opening into the pollinated humidity of the noon hour. 
My lips are chapped. My fingers are swollen from pooled blood. 
You have to raise them above your heart occasionally in the heat. Yet another teaching from her. 
So I reach my hands upward to the branch above my head. Instead of wood, I feel the small head of a dove and its mournful coo against my fingers. It coos and coos and coos and I feel the vibration through my entire body, the gathered wetness and sweat vibrating with the small bird’s song. The poor thing keeps trying to fly away, but I am holding on tighter. She is still watching me as I am her. The harder I pull, the more broken the coos become. Brrrr. Brrrr. Is the sound it lets out. Brrr. Brrr. Brrr. I start to mimic it. Brrr. Brrr. Brrr. We sing in harmony. From the window, Mother has joined us. I can see her mouth puffing as she hums, her lips vibrating with the Brrr. Brrr. Brrr. 
The dove lets out one more Brrrr. Before I snap its head off and we all go silent. 
I feel warm liquid trickling down my leg, the golden silk stream which matches the glint in my eye falling into a puddle beneath me. 
Mother is still in the window, but she is no longer looking at me as I am at her. I drop the dove to the ground, the bloody body joining my piss. 
Mother is washing a heart of lettuce and I dip two fingers in the wetness of piss on the branch and suck the salty liquid out. My mouth is no longer dry. My fingers are no longer swollen.